Wired and wireless communication technologies have improved over the past several years, and service providers are now able offer their users a wide array of features and services over high capacity cable, fiber, and/or wireless networks. As a result, the popularity and usage of Internet protocol (IP) based services (e.g., streaming multimedia, IP television, games, etc.) has grown rapidly, and the improvements in network throughput afforded by the high capacity networks is being matched by the increase in user usage demands for IP services. By way of example, on-demand Internet streaming media services (e.g., Netflix®, Vudu®, Amazon®, etc.) can now account for forty percent of the total Internet traffic at peak hours. As these IP-based services continue to grow in popularity and usage, the efficient management of the amount of bandwidth consumed by streaming media services is of increasing economic importance.